and ducks.
We bought a pig and kept him on board three or four days. He squealed
without cessation, until our captain considered him a bore, and
ordered him killed and roasted.

Pigs were generally carried in bags or in the arms of their owners.
One day a woman brought a thirty pound pig suspended over her
shoulder. The noise and kicking of the brute did not disturb her, and
she held him as unconcernedly as if he were an infant. Finding no
market for her property, she turned it loose and allowed it to take
its own way home. Milk was almost invariably brought in bottles, and
eggs in boxes or baskets. Eggs were sold by the dizaine (ten,) and not
as with us by the dozen.

At Raddevski several kinds of berries were offered us, but only the
blackberry and whortleberry were familiar to my eyes. One berry, of
which I vainly tried to catch the Russian name, was of oblong shape,
three-fourths an inch in length, and had the taste of a sweet grape.
It was said to grow on a climbing vine. Cedar nuts were offered in
large quantities, but I did not purchase.

Here, as elsewhere on the lower Amoor, men and women labor together in
the fields and engage equally in marketing at the boats. I was much
amused in watching the commercial transactions between the peasants
and our steward. I could not understand what was said, but the
conversation in loud tones and with many words had much the appearance
of an altercation. Several times I looked around expecting to see
blows, but the excitement was confined to the vocal organs alone.

The passage of the Amoor through the Buryea mountains is nearly a
hundred miles in length. Toward the upper end the mountains are more
precipitous and a few peaks rise high above the others, like The
Sentinels in Yosemite valley. The last cliff before one reaches the
level country is known as Cape Sverbef, a bold promontory that
projects into the river and is nearly a thousand feet high. Not far
from this cliff is a flat-topped mountain remarkable for several
crevices on its northern side, from which currents of cold air
steadily issue. Ice forms around these fissures in midsummer, and a
thermometer suspended in one of them fell in an hour to 30 deg.
Fahrenheit.

An hour after passing the mountains I saw a dozen conical huts on the
Chinese shore and a few dusky natives lounging in front of them. They
reminded me of the lodges of our noble red men as I saw them west of
the Missouri several years before. Inst